United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Education Above All Foundation (EAA) and the Generation Amazing Foundation are collaborating to develop a Football 4 Development Playbook (F4DP), a new toolkit to support some of the world’s most vulnerable, forcibly displaced children.
The F4DP toolkit is a practical guide that uses football-themed physical games, activities and training drills to teach and develop life skills for children like teamwork, resilience, discipline, and social integration.
It aims to improve social inclusion, cohesion and well-being and will be used in existing UNHCR and EAA projects that support out-of-school children at the primary level, as well as displaced populations in Chad, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
The partnership to develop the F4DP tool was signed in Geneva by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) Secretary General and Generation Amazing Foundation Chairman HE Hassan Al Thawadi, and EAA CEO Fahad Al Sulaiti.
According to Grandi, the project aims to harness the transformative power of football, empower refugee children and youth, and provide life-long skills that can help the children and their host communities.
The Generation Amazing Foundation, a FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ legacy initiative, is developing the materials in collaboration with UNHCR to build upon its existing Sports for Protection toolkit.
Al Thawadi said that the mission of Generation Amazing is to ensure that the heart and soul of football reach people who need it the most. UNHCR and EAA are engaged with assisting refugee communities around the world and according to Al Thawadi, they are pleased to contribute to this critical work through this partnership.
Football (and sport) alone can’t change the world, but ensuring that its incredible power to inspire and unite is harnessed is a responsibility we must deliver on, especially in places where populations battle with innumerable obstacles and challenges.
Improved mental agility, attention span and decision-making, alongside self-confidence, self-efficacy and resilience, are just some of the associated advantages of sport, all vital skills for children and young people, particularly those who have been forcibly displaced and living in refugee camps or otherwise disadvantaged.
EAA’s Al-Sulaiti said that although education is a human right, refugee communities host some of the largest out-of-school child populations.
We are all too aware of the role well-designed sports interventions can play within existing education programmes in reaching the most marginalised children to improve multiple areas of development.
He said that they look forward to welcoming these new football-focused materials to better help them ensure that when it comes to education, no child is left behind.
Al-Sulaiti added that they value the role of partners, the UNCHR and GA in developing the Football 4 Development Playbook, and their strategic partner – Qatar Fund for Development, for their support of the main project, using sport as a tool to enhance humanitarian and development efforts and to consolidate peace in underdeveloped countries and fragile societies.
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